The Music of India/Drums of India - Sharan Rani/Chatur Lal

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Sharan Rani was
the first woman instrumentalist and the only female sarod player of India, a
musician so synonymous with her instrument her appreciative public called her
"Sarod Rani”

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Her teachers were
the revered Allauddin Khan, guru to Ravi Shankar, who taught most of the best
known instrumentalists in Northern India, and his son, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,
the great master sarodist who founded schools in America and who, with his
brother-in-law Shankar did so much to bring world renown to the mysteries of
Indian classical music.

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With more formal
education than most Indian performers (she held an M.A from Delhi University),
Sharan Rani combined intellectual understanding of her art with a very special
gift for emotional communication.

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Her touch was light
but very sure and her improvisations sprung from the from the heart with a
remarkably direct tenderness and sensuality that could be overwhelming.

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These recordings
was made in San Francisco in November 1961, during the course of a world tour
that took in Australia, the Fiji Islands, France, England, Switzerland and West
Germany.

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"The eloquence of
the two drums played by Chatur Lal was something truly remarkable. With a
fluctuating pressure of his wrist on the larger of the two drums, Mr. Lal could
vary its pitch so subtly that it spoke with almost human intonation.”

The New York Times·
Chatur Lal, the
best known Indian drummer of his generation (he had already toured the United
States and Europe with Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar) and a performer of
breathtaking virtuosity, provides tabla accompaniment to Sharan Rani and
performs three lengthy solos of his own.